First try at a small turned box...

I found a woodturning class at the Arts Council one county over. The teacher is great and met some fantastic folks. A bunch of old timers come to the class to shoot the breeze and show off their stuff. They are very open to newcomers and I learned more talking to them for 3 hours than I had after reading books for a month! The workshop has about 8 lathes so there is ample opportunity to get some hands on during the class as well.

One demonstration was finishing a small box. I had read about turning boxes but it was totally different to see someone actually do it. I was able to turn something resembling a box turned this evening. I wasted a lot of wood and had some issues working on the sequence of preparing tenons and splitting the piece into a top and bottom so I could work on the separately, but in the end it worked out.